A number of preventable patient care errors occur because the prescription of medication to a patient is done without first consulting a patient's laboratory results. Some patients have had drugs continuously administered to them for hours or days after toxic levels for that drug are recorded by the lab. Some patients have received particular medication long after the laboratory has documented signs of drug-related side effects. Others have received erroneous laboratory test results because their medication interferes with the laboratory tests they are undergoing. Still others have received medications even after the patient's lab result indicates that it is dangerous to do so. All these errors, and many more not mentioned, could have all been prevented if a patients laboratory results were consulted prior to prescribing or administrating a medication.
These errors occur for many reasons. At times, a physician is ordering certain medications at a site remote from a medical facility and so is not able to review a patient's chart. At times, the physician isn't even aware of contraindications for certain medication because tests revealing those contraindications have not been performed or had not been recorded in a patient's chart. In some instances, even though contraindications for certain medications are documented, the physician simply fails to detect the contraindications from the patient's chart. Consequently, some oversight is needed in order to determine if mistakes are made or if an ADE might occur in a patient's medication regimen.
Since a pharmacy department of a medical facility is typically responsible for filling all prescriptions and dispensing all medications to patients, it is often the only means for catching some of these errors. To that extent, some pharmacies have information systems in place that can alert the pharmacist that an ADE would occur between drugs administered to a patient. However, these information systems are typically limited to detecting a potential ADE between drugs administered to a patient. These pharmacy information systems are not capable of predicting an ADE based on a patient's physiological condition, because these systems typically do not monitor or have access or have the capability to process a patient's laboratory results.
A laboratory department of a medical facility typically performs tests and analyzes specimens (such as blood, urine, cell cultures, etc.) received from a patient and stores these results on a laboratory information system. In many instances, the test results and analysis on patient specimens are germane to the administration of medication. However, despite this symbiotic relationship between the laboratory and the pharmacy, these two departments and their work processes, personnel, and particularly their information systems, rarely effectively communicate with each other.
In many clinical settings, there are a number of factors which prevent the integration of data from the laboratory and the pharmacy. Compatibility issues between the separate information systems is often a major roadblock to integration. The desire of each department to have information systems particularly adapted for their respective needs may be another. The cost of integrating data from both information system is certainly another prohibiting factor. As a result, there is a need for a commercial system that integrates and uses laboratory and pharmacy data to anticipate potential ADEs in a patient's medication regimen.
Thus, significant improvements in patient care can be achieved by developing a cost effective, commercial, turnkey system that integrates data collected and stored in pharmacy and laboratory information systems and utilizes this data to anticipate potential ADEs in a patient's medication regimen.